The enormous earthen monument Poverty Point, built on a Mississippi
River bayou some 3,200 years ago, is an impressive feat of engineering.
Hunter-gatherers moved more than 26.5 million cubic feet (750,000 cubic
meters) of dirt to create concentric ridges and several large mounds in
what is today northern Louisiana.

Now researchers say one of the most impressive earthworks at the site
likely took shape in fewer than 90 days, built by thousands of Native
American laborers using a "bucket brigade" system.

Archaeologists excavating parts of Poverty Point, which is now in the
running to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site, analyzed core samplings
and sediments from one of the massive earthen features known as Mound A.
Curiously, they found no traces of rainfall or erosion during the
construction phase of the mound.

"We're talking about an area of northern Louisiana that now tends to
receive a great deal of rainfall," said researcher T.R. Kidder, an
anthropology professor at Washington University in St. Louis. "Even in a
very dry year, it would seem very unlikely that this location could go
more than 90 days without experiencing some significant level of
rainfall. Yet, the soil in these mounds shows no sign of erosion taking
place during the construction period. There is no evidence from the
region of an epic drought at this time, either."

Mound A, which stretches across 538,000 square feet (50,000 square m)
at its base and rises 72 feet (22 m) above the river, is thought to be
the last addition to Poverty Point's altered landscape. If it were built
today, it would take a 10-wheel dump truck more than 30,000 loads to
move the estimated 8.4 million cubic feet (238,500 cubic m) of dirt that
make up the mound, Kidder and his colleagues said. But hunter-gatherers
likely did it with bushel baskets.

"The Poverty Point mounds were built by people who had no access to
domesticated draft animals, no wheelbarrows, no sophisticated tools for
moving earth," Kidder explained in a statement. "It's likely that these
mounds were built using a simple 'bucket brigade' system, with thousands
of people passing soil along from one to another using some form of
crude container, such as a woven basket, a hide sack or a wooden
platter."

The researchers believe to complete such a feat in such a short amount
of time would have required about 3,000 laborers. This suggests that as
many as 9,000 archaic Native Americans might have flocked to Poverty
Point for the huge construction project, assuming that many of the
workers were accompanied by their wives and children, the team said.

"Given that a band of 25-30 people is considered quite large for most hunter-gatherer
communities, it's truly amazing that this ancient society could bring
together a group of nearly 10,000 people, find some way to feed them and
get this mound built in a matter of months," Kidder said.

"These results contradict the popular notion that pre-agricultural
people were socially, politically, and economically simple and unable to
organize themselves into large groups that could build elaborate
architecture or engage in so-called complex social behavior."

Poverty Point was recently nominated to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site
because of its cultural significance. Artifacts excavated at the site
come from as far away as the Ohio and Tennessee river valleys and the
Appalachians of Alabama and Georgia, indicating the Poverty Point
civilization was heavily involved in trade, the Louisiana Office of
Cultural Development's Division of Archaeology noted in its UNESCO
application.

The new research was detailed online last month in the journal Geoarchaeology.

This video provides the facts about psychotropic drugs and the huge
profits they create for the pharmaceutical industry. These drugs are not
safe and have not been on the market long enough to provide sufficient
long term studies regarding their effects. These drugs do cause
addiction, however most "doctors" would call this dependence because you
do not have to take an increasing dose over time. They are completely
fine with you being addicted to the same amount of any given drug on a
daily basis. Over half of the people that commit suicide in the United
States are prescribed to psychotropic drugs. (Ex: Paxil (Paroxetine),
Zoloft (Sertraline), Prozac, Wellbutrin (Bupropion), Effexor, Seroquil,
Ultram (Tramadol), etc.)

(NaturalNews) Have you ever wondered why most major municipal water
utilities across America continue to artificially fluoridate public
water supplies when inexpensive fluoride toothpastes are readily
available for those who choose to use them? Or why governments and
medical groups continue to force fluoridated tap water on the public in
spite of the fact that it has many known and proven health risks? These
and many other pertinent questions find their answers in the
hard-hitting documentary Fluoridegate: An American Tragedy, one of the most powerful documentaries ever made about the fluoride fraud.

A sordid narrative that recaps the dirty history of fluoride and how it came to be an officially recommended water additive, Fluoridegate delves deep into the completely unscientific and blatantly corrupt process by which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) forced fluoride onto the public via the National Program for
Water Fluoridation. The film also exposes how Dr. William Marcus, a
now-retired senior scientist at the EPA, was targeted and fired for
leaking critical information back in the 1990s about the many dangers of
fluoride, none of which were being publicly shared in accordance with
the EPA's mission and purpose.

"Exposing a child to (fluoride)
chemicals in the first six years of life ... will harm that child's
learning capability, self control, and have effects on his brain
function that are lifelong," explains Dr. Roger D. Masters, Ph.D.,
Professor Emeritus at Dartmouth College about the fluoride
scam. "To permit that to happen when you know it's happening, and not
to interfere by stopping the use of something like silicofluoride, which
makes it worse, is immoral."

Fluoride whistleblowers targeted for bringing truth to light

Concerning
Dr. Marcus, his honest work in evaluating the effects of fluoride on
human health, and in recommending that the issue of water fluoridation
be investigated further, were never taken seriously by his superiors,
who ultimately had him fired. And this pattern of corruption is
persistent throughout fluoride's ignominious history in the U.S.,
representing the true impetus behind its continued use and
recommendation by many public health officials today.

"[Dr.
Marcus] had recommended additional research be conducted within the
[EPA] to make sure that the amount of fluoride that was added to
drinking water was
safe. And he showed me other documents that indicated that the agency
was very upset with him for this recommendation, and had initiated a
campaign to fire him," explains Stephen M. Kohn of the National Whistleblowers Association (NWA) about the persecution Dr. Marcus received from the EPA for simply trying to do his job.

"This
document was properly prepared within the context of his job as a
Senior Science Advisor, meaning the highest level scientist within EPA
who's non-supervisory. He's [essentially] the guru scientist you go to
for the tough issues. And Dr. Marcus reviewed the literature, reviewed
the materials before him, and set forth basic scientific facts in this
document to his supervisors and said, 'We need to study this matter
because if fluoride does pose a health risk, we have to monitor how much
we put in the drinking water, or if we should put in any at all.'"

Fluoride as forced medication on a non-consenting public

In
other words, key public figures who should have supported Dr. Marcus'
efforts to protect public health instead retaliated against him by
launching a sinister campaign to get him fired. These crooks not only
succeeded in destroying Dr. Marcus' career through lies and deception,
but they also paved the way for the fluoride agenda to continue onward
without obstruction.

Since that time, many other fluoride
whistleblowers have come forward with the truth -- and some progress has
been made in removing the toxic chemical from public water supplies.
But there is still considerable work to be done by those who know the
truth about fluoride, as fluoride advocates continue to spread lies and
misinformation in order to perpetuate the scam.

"This is forced
medication of the public, because the government says so," explains
Peter F. Vallone, an outspoken New York City councilman who is currently
working on removing fluoride from New York City's public water supply.
"What's next, they don't think we're happy enough so they put some Xanax
in our water supply because they're allowed to, because they're the
government? It's outrageous."

Fluoridegate
is packed with powerful testimonies from other key insiders privy to
how fluoride became an integral part of water treatment policy, and how
the public was manipulated into accepting this forced medication in the
name of preventing tooth decay. And the best part is that the film
is completely FREE to watch, as its creator, the distinguished Dr.
David Kennedy, actually encourages people to share it with their friends
and circles of influence.

"It's not just children who are affected -- everyone is affected," adds Dr. Yolanda Whyte, M.D., a pediatrician who opposes water fluoridation.
"Even for unborn children, fluoride can cross the placenta and it can
cross the blood-brain barrier. And when it does that, it can lower I.Q.,
and even affect other neuro-developmental outcomes, so this is very
serious."

Monday, January 28, 2013

The latest megalomaniacal threat from the financial
globalists wants to saddle the world economy with a cost of trillions of
dollars that benefits favorite corporatists. The phony global warming
cult has a core purpose. Their objective is to drive down the standard
of living for non-elites and prevent the use of fossil fuel energy. The
fallacious science used to create a disinformation scare for politically
unsophisticated “True Believers” is a direct result of transnational
money manipulators. The Davos crowd sponsors the educational and media
institutions that trump up junk research and manufacture idealistic
solutions.

“The world must spend an additional $14 trillion on clean energy
infrastructure, low-carbon transport and energy efficiency to meet the
United Nations’ goal for capping the rise in average global
temperatures, according to a World Economic Forum report released on
Monday.”

Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon states the globalist viewpoint.

“Economic growth and sustainability are inter-dependent, you cannot
have one without the other, and greening investment is the pre-requisite
to realizing both goals.”

What can be expected from these “greening investment” projects? In
order to anticipate future plans, a comprehensive understanding of the
past and present shady business practices is crucial.

“The still-emerging links of the mafia to the once-booming wind and
solar sector here are raising fresh questions about the use of
government subsidies to fuel a shift toward cleaner energies, with
critics claiming that huge state incentives created excessive profits
for companies and a market bubble ripe for fraud. China-based Suntech,
the world’s largest solar panel maker, last month said it would need to
restate more than two years of financial results because of allegedly
fake capital put up to finance new plants in Italy. The discoveries here
also follow “eco-corruption” cases in Spain, where a number of
companies stand accused of illegally tapping state aid.

Because it receives more sun and wind than any other part of Italy,
Sicily became one of Europe’s most obvious hotbeds for renewable
energies over the past decade. As the Italian government began offering
billions of euros annually in subsidies for wind and solar development,
the potential profitability of such projects also soared — a fact that
did not go unnoticed by Sicily’s infamous crime families.

Roughly a third of the island’s 30 wind farms — along with several
solar power plants — have been seized by authorities. Officials have
frozen more than $2 billion in assets and arrested a dozen alleged crime
bosses, corrupt local councilors and mafia-linked entrepreneurs.
Italian prosecutors are now investigating suspected mafia involvement in
renewable-energy projects from Sardinia to Apulia.”

“Lewis “Lew” Hay, III is executive chairman of NextEra Energy, Inc.,
and it is estimated by Forbes, that CEO “Hay earns nearly $10 million in
total compensation from NextEra.” Despite the fact that Hay was
actually a “major political contributor to Sen. John McCain in 2008,” he
quickly learned which side his power company could generate the title
of the “Third Largest Recipient of DOE Risky Loans.” Hay too joined
wealthy Democratic donors on Obama’s Jobs Council in 2011, along with
the other two I have tackled in this series, “Spreading the Wealth to
Obama’s Ultra-Rich Job Council” –– Jobs Czar, Jeffrey Immelt CEO of
General Electric has raked in $3 billion and counting, meanwhile John
Doerr, along with his “climate buddy” Al Gore’s, VC firm Kleiner Perkins
is tied to at least $10 billion of stimulus funds. Both General
Electric and Doerr were key contributors to what went into the 2009
Stimulus.

No matter how you slice it, whether we are sending money abroad or
fueling corporate welfare here in the United States as well as the
egregious practice of crony capitalism, the 2009-Recovery act is a lie, a
travesty and a scam, favoring wealthy financial backers of President
Obama and the Democratic Party as well as those with influential
political connections to both. And with a president that’s dead set on
pushing a fierce and radical climate change agenda and funding green
energy with taxpayer money, no matter the long list of failures, there
is no end in sight to this green corruption scandal.

Besides NextEra Energy taking full advantage of the federal
production tax credit (PTC), we now can confirm that the Bank of Obama
has rewarded this conglomerate of a power company, and his millionaire
job council buddy Lewis Hay, with two large DOE loans ($2.3 billion);
one large stimulus smart-grid grant ($200 million); and six 1603
stimulus grants totaling $398.5 million. Thus NextEra’s green tab is on
its way to $3 billion of taxpayer money, and that’s not factoring in the
PTC.”

With this background and sorry record of corruption to build upon,
the World Economic Forum at Davos sets the agenda for the global
economy.

“The WEF suggests a crisis of leadership and debt are some of the
biggest challenges facing the world, and that ’global governance’ is the
key to stabilization. Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade
Organisation, said: ‘We need proper global governance that has the
necessary tools, power and energy to create a more level playing field
at the international level.’

At the end of the day, a push for increased global governance and an
environmental agenda is on the table for Davos 2013, under the banner of
’Resilent Dynamism’:

“Mr. Klaus Schwab (WEF Founder and executive chairman) said that the
world is seeing “a new reality of sudden shocks and prolonged global
economic malaise, particularly in major economies experiencing economic
austerity”. He also mentioned, “Future growth in this new context
requires dynamism – bold vision and even bolder action.

Either attribute – Resilience or Dynamism – alone is insufficient, as leadership in 2013 will require both”.

The “Greening” leadership translates into forcing upon the world a “Cap and Trade”
dictatorship. The Calderon bandits that sip champagne from their Swiss
chateau want to extend their aristocratic bondage upon a gullible
public. The proper dictum is “Save the World” from the New World Order
elites.

“The L-W CSA allows covered facilities to satisfy up to 15% of their
compliance obligation with specific domestic offsets. An additional 15%
can be covered using international emission allowances. Unlimited
banking is allowed and owners and operators of covered facilities can
borrow up to 15% of their annual compliance obligation from future
years. The L-W CSA also creates a Carbon Market Efficiency Board to
monitor the carbon trading market and implement specific cost relief
measures, including increased borrowing and use of offsets.”

What a boondoggle for the consumer and a windfall for organized
crime. If you worry about mob infiltration into this extortion racket,
you had better focus on the true mafia; namely, the globalist
plutocrats.
If the disclosed goal is to extract $14 Trillion from the distressed
world economies, one can only reasonably conclude that the surreptitious
objective is to widen the income gap between the ultra-rich and the
peons. People pay the costs of taxation exploitation. The privileged
elites view the masses as useless eaters, destined to be herded into
pens of servitude.

The fake global warming panic is pure political propaganda, used to bolster a guilt complex to justify insider theft. A Cap and Trade
ploy is designed to push up the costs of fossil fuel with full
knowledge that “Greening Dreams” are no substitutes to real energy.

Research projects into technological alternative sources, based upon
efficiency and reliability standards are valid. However, allowing
governmental cronyism to impose limits on cheap energy, distorts the
marketplace. The Davos crews of corporatist gangsters fly into their
feast on private jets. The sycophant media reporting by the business
toadies that attend the gala celebration of global autocracy should be
indisputable evidence that the globalist own the public relations spin.

Even so, such distorted coverage does not blind those who understand
the true nature of the planetary struggle. The monopolist plan for
adding unwarranted tolls on your family budget, sold as a noble
necessity, will only accelerate the systematic impoverishment of your
economic existence.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Life will perish as the environment perishes21st century ecological economist

Only in science fiction can humans escape the consequences of destroying their own habitat. In Robert A. Heinlein’s Time Enough For Love,
the “Great Diaspora of the Human Race” began “more than two millennia
ago” and has spread to more than “two thousand colonized planets.” The
once “lovely green planet” Earth is a slum planet barely able to support
life where only the poorest live, Earth’s natural capital having been
consumed over two thousand years ago. Humans have found the ability to
rejuvenate themselves and to live almost endless lives, but they are
unable to rejuvenate the planets whose natural capital they devour.
Humans have not encountered “one race as mean, as nasty, as deadly as
our own.” As homo sapiens use up the environments of colonized planets,
“human intergalactic colony ships are already headed out into the
Endless Deeps,” leaving their ruins behind them.

In his book, Collapse,
University of California biogeography professor Jared Diamond describes
the nonfictional past and present destruction of Earth’s natural
capital. Surprisingly, Diamond begins his story of the self-destruction
of Easter Island, Anasazi, and Maya civilizations with present-day
Montana and ends with Australia. We think of these two lands as scenic,
lightly populated, and largely untouched, but they have been brought to
the brink of ruin. Diamond’s point is that modern scientific and
technological man is no better at managing nature’s capital than
previous societies.

Many associate ecological destruction with population pressure.
However, the toxicity associated with mining, fracking, chemical
fertilizer and GMO farming, and the adverse watershed effects of logging
is turning even low density states such as Montana into an environment
with ruined soil and water.

In Montana mining has produced a legacy of toxicity–mercury, arsenic,
cyanide, cadmium, lead, and zinc. These toxic substances have found
their way into Montana’s fishing rivers and into reservoirs. From
reservoirs toxic substances have leaked into groundwater and into the
wells that supply homes. In 1981 groundwater serving family wells in
areas of Montana was found with arsenic levels 42 times higher than
federal standards permit.

Before Montana could find ways to retrieve its water resources from
the toxic run-offs from mining, a new threat has appeared: hydraulic
fracking. Fracking uses huge amounts of surface water, which it infuses
with toxic chemicals to aid the extraction of underground gas and oil
deposits that are otherwise unrecoverable. The energy industry and its
media shills are touting “energy independence” in order to sway the
public away from environmentalists, who are warning of the dangers.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

"According to a Sierra Club report linking fertilizers to red tide blooms, residential fertilizer use in the state of Florida increased by 153,533.95 tons or 45% from 2003 to 2006 alone.[ii]"

If you consult the websites of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission or the Mote Marine Laboratory, both considered authorities on marine environmental issues in the state of Florida, red tide outbreaks associated with Karenia brevis are "natural phenomena," 'beyond our ability to control,'
and explicitly not fed by nutrient pollution or causally linked to
land-based, human activities. And yet, longtime residents of the
Florida Gulf coast (the author included) can tell you from first-hand
experience that the blooms have been getting progressively worse, closer
to shore, and persisting for a greater length of time, indicating that
if it is an entirely natural cycle, it has undergone concerning changes
of late.

The reality is that authorities who deny the involvement of land-based activities and algae blooms are conveniently ignoring the science, which is peer reviewed and published, that instructs us on what is feeding red tide near shore.

Florida has only so many industries that sustain its fragile economy,
many of which would have to enact substantial and costly reforms in
order to improve the environmental situation. The tourism and real
estate industries also have a vested interest in minimizing and/or
denying the extent of the problem, at least in the short term. The
long-term outlook, however, is dismal for these industries, who, failing
to act, would see the primary attractor for tourists or potential
buyers of real estate -- the Gulf of Mexico -- transformed into a Petri
dish. It is for this reason that the truth about red tide must gain a
wider audience, and we hope, widespread acceptance.

A team of geologists has discovered a large aquifer far beneath
Mexico City that could supply potable water to the capital for many
decades and serve as a reserve basin in times of drought, authorities
said Monday.

“It’s a deep aquifer of significant proportions, but they haven’t
been quantified yet and the next step is to carry out the necessary
studies to see its real potential for sustainable extraction,” Mexico
City’s water systems director, Ramon Aguirre, said in a radio interview.

Although news accounts have said the aquifer could supply the
capital’s water needs for a century, Aguirre did not confirm that
estimate.

Ad

“That would be great,” Aguirre said, adding that the water basin is
an important discovery because it could provide emergency supplies
during droughts.

“Even if there’s more than 100 years of extractable water … that
doesn’t mean it’s enough to supply the city for more than 100 years.
That difference needs to be pointed out,” the official said.

He also noted that development of this new reserve will not affect
other Mexico City aquifers or lead to sinkholes because clay layers
separate one water basin from another.

Mexico City has been gradually sinking for centuries because water is
drawn from underground aquifers faster than it can be replenished by
rainfall and other natural sources.

Aguirre said exploration work began 18 months ago and that up to
three more years of studies will be needed to determine the aquifer’s
yield capacity.

The project has an estimated price tag of as much as 500 million pesos ($39.3 million).

Climate change is going to make life harder, water scarcer, and decisions about the future tougher.

Las Vegas exudes an all-you-can-eat mentality. People walk between
casinos carrying giant cups of slushy liquor; advertisements blare from
speakers on the streets pitching the best shows, best food and best
deals; escalators take you across streets and directly into malls. You
spend your time buying something, eating something, or watching
something. Either way, it’s consume, consume, consume.

But this hunger is hard to satiate and it takes its toll, revealing
the city’s central dichotomy — it is a destination of both the high-brow
and the down and out, the high rolling and the thrifty, a megaphone of
riches and poverty. And nowhere is this more apparent then in one of Las
Vegas’ most contentious relationships — with water. If you walk the
Strip, you’ll see gondolas floating on canals of aqua pool water,
misters spraying overheated tourists in the hot sun, pirate ships docked
in rocky coves, and fountains everywhere you look.

The abundant water is a mirage, although it wasn’t always. Las Vegas
got its name, meaning “the meadows,” after Spanish explorers found
artesian springs in the area. And long before that, in the Pleistocene,
much of Nevada was plunged under the depths of massive Lake Lahontan.
There are only vestiges of that great lake left, and the early artesian
wells found near Las Vegas have long ago quenched the thirsty, but
nevertheless, the thirsty keep on coming.

When groundwater reserves ran low in the 1940s, the region turned to
Lake Mead. Today, the Las Vegas area gets 90 percent of its water from
the no-longer-very-mighty Colorado River as it is corralled behind
Hoover Dam in Lake Mead. And now that’s threatened. A new federal study
released in December found that the over-allocated Colorado River will
be further stretched by climate change, drought and climbing
populations. By 2060, the river will be short of what its dependents in
seven U.S. states need by 3.2 million acre-feet a year. (An acre-foot of
water is roughly enough for one suburban family per year.)

So what’s a city -- or really, its water manager -- to do? A smart gambler wouldn’t bet on the Colorado.

We are being deeply and intrinsically damaged by the system
that now feeds us. Our lives are shortened and our ability to move into
the future, to reproduce ourselves, is impaired. That is the primary
message brought home by a study comparing conventional and organic food
in fruit flies.

A new study published by PLoS investigated the health effects of organic foods on fruit flies, Drosophila melangaster, and
found that even these insects do much better on organically-grown foods
than on modern nutrient-destroying petroleum-based agriculture. The two
most significant factors indicative of health, longevity and fertility,
were shown to be significantly better on a diet of organic food than
that produced by Agribusiness.

By the way, the study also clearly documented that soy is
unhealthy—extremely so—though organic soy is still superior to
conventional.

Friday, January 25, 2013

I’d like to share with you some questions–some flies that keep buzzing in my head.

Is justice right side up?

Has world justice been frozen in an upside-down position?

The shoe-thrower of Iraq, the man who hurled his shoes at Bush, was
condemned to three years in prison. Doesn’t he deserve, instead, a
medal?

Who is the terrorist? The hurler of shoes or their recipient? Is
not the real terrorist the serial killer who, lying, fabricated the Iraq
war, massacred a multitude, and legalized and ordered torture?

Who are the guilty ones–the people of Atenco, in Mexico, the
indigenous Mapuches of Chile, the Kekchies of Guatemala, the landless
peasants of Brazil—all being accused of the crime of terrorism for
defending their right to their own land? If the earth is sacred, even
if the law does not say so, aren’t its defenders sacred too?

According to Foreign Policy Magazine, Somalia is the most dangerous
place in the world. But who are the pirates? The starving people who
attack ships or the speculators of Wall Street who spent years attacking
the world and who are now rewarded with many millions of dollars for
their pains?

Why does the world reward its ransackers?

Why is justice a one-eyed blind woman? Wal-Mart, the most powerful
corporation on earth, bans trade unions. McDonald’s, too. Why do these
corporations violate, with criminal impunity, international law? Is it
because in this contemporary world of ours, work is valued as lower than
trash and workers’ rights are valued even less?

Who are the righteous and who are the villains? If international
justice really exists, why are the powerful never judged? The
masterminds of the worst butcheries are never sent to prison. Is it
because it is these butchers themselves who hold the prison keys?

What makes the five nations with veto power in the United Nations
inviolable? Is it of a divine origin, that veto power of theirs? Can
you trust those who profit from war to guard the peace?

Is it fair that world peace is in the hands of the very five nations
who are also the world’s main producers of weapons? Without implying
any disrespect to the drug runners, couldn’t we refer to this
arrangement as yet another example of organized crime?

Those who clamor, everywhere, for the death penalty are strangely
silent about the owners of the world. Even worse, these clamorers
forever complain about knife-wielding murderers, yet say nothing about
missile-wielding arch-murderers.

And one asks oneself: Given that these self-righteous world owners
are so enamored of killing, why pray don’t they try to aim their
murderous proclivities at social injustice? Is it a just a world when,
every minute, three million dollars are wasted on the military, while at
the same time fifteen children perish from hunger or curable disease?
Against whom is the so-called international community armed to the
teeth? Against poverty or against the poor?

Why don’t the champions of capital punishment direct their ire at the
values of the consumer society, values which pose a daily threat to
public safety? Or doesn’t, perhaps, the constant bombardment of
advertising constitute an invitation to crime? Doesn’t that bombardment
numb millions and millions of unemployed or poorly paid youth,
endlessly teaching them the lie that “to be = to have,” that life
derives its meaning from ownership of such things as cars or brand name
shoes? Own, own, they keep saying, implying that he who has nothing is,
himself, nothing.

Why isn’t the death penalty applied to death itself? The world is
organized in the service of death. Isn’t it true that the military
industrial complex manufactures death and devours the greater part of
our resources as well as a good part of our energies? Yet the owners of
the world only condemn violence when it is exercised by others. To
extraterrestrials, if they existed, such monopoly of violence would
appear inexplicable. It likewise appears insupportable to earth
dwellers who, against all the available evidence, hope for survival: we
humans are the only animals who specialize in mutual extermination, and
who have developed a technology of destruction that is annihilating,
coincidentally, our planet and all its inhabitants.

This technology sustains itself on fear. It is the fear of enemies
that justifies the squandering of resources by the military and police.
And speaking about implementing the death penalty, why don’t we pass a
death sentence on fear itself? Would it not behoove us to end this
universal dictatorship of the professional scaremongers? The sowers of
panic condemn us to loneliness, keeping solidarity outside our reach:
falsely teaching us that we live in a dog-eat-dog world, that he who can
must crush his fellows, that danger is lurking behind every neighbor.
Watch out, they keep saying, be careful, this neighbor will steal from
you, that other one will rape you, that baby carriage hides a Muslim
bomb, and that woman who is watching you–that innocent-looking neighbor
of yours—will surely infect you with swine flu.

In this upside-down world, they are making us afraid of even the most
elementary acts of justice and common sense. When President Evo Morales
started to re-build Bolivia, so that his country with its indigenous
majority will no longer feel shame facing a mirror, his actions provoked
panic. Morales’ challenge was indeed catastrophic from the traditional
standpoint of the racist order, whose beneficiaries felt that theirs
was the only possible option for Bolivia. It was Evo, they felt, who
ushered in chaos and violence, and this alleged crime justified efforts
to blow up national unity and break Bolivia into pieces. And when
President Correa of Ecuador refused to pay the illegitimate debts of his
country, the news caused terror in the financial world and Ecuador was
threatened with dire punishment, for daring to set such a bad example.
If the military dictatorships and roguish politicians have always been
pampered by international banks, have we not already conditioned
ourselves to accept it as our inevitable fate that the people must pay
for the club that hits them and for the greed the plunders them?

But, have common sense and justice always been divorced from each other?

Were not common sense and justice meant to walk hand in hand, intimately linked?

Aren’t common sense, and also justice, in accord with the feminist
slogan which states that if we, men, had to go through pregnancy,
abortion would have been free. Why not legalize the right to have an
abortion? Is it because abortion will then cease being the sole
privilege of the women who can afford it and of the physicians who can
charge for it?

The same thing is observed with another scandalous case of denial of
justice and common sense: why aren’t drugs legal? Is this not, like
abortion, a public health issue? And the very same country that counts
in its population more drug addicts than any other country in the world,
what moral authority does it have to condemn its drug suppliers? And
why don’t the mass media, in their dedication to the war against the
scourge of drugs, ever divulge that it is Afghanistan which
single-handedly satisfies just about all the heroin consumed in the
world? Who rules Afghanistan? Is it not militarily occupied by a
messianic country which conferred upon itself the mission of saving us
all?

Why aren’t drugs legalized once and for all? Is it because they
provide the best pretext for military invasions, in addition to
providing the juiciest profits to the large banks who, in the darkness
of night, serve as money-laundering centers?

Nowadays the world is sad because fewer vehicles are sold. One of
the consequences of the global crisis is a decline of the otherwise
prosperous car industry. Had we some shred of common sense, a mere
fragment of a sense of justice, would we not celebrate this good news?

Could anyone deny that a decline in the number of automobiles is good
for nature, seeing that she will end up with a bit less poison in her
veins? Could anyone deny the value of this decline in car numbers to
pedestrians, seeing that fewer of them will die?

Here’s how Lewis Carroll’s queen explained to Alice how justice is dispensed in a looking-glass world:

“There’s the King’s Messenger. He’s in prison now, being
punished: and the trial doesn’t begin until next Wednesday: and of
course the crime comes last of all.”

In El Salvador, Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero found that justice,
like a snake, only bites barefoot people. He died of gunshot wounds,
for proclaiming that in his country the dispossessed were condemned from
the very start, on the day of their birth.

Couldn’t the outcome of the recent elections in El Salvador be
viewed, in some ways, as a homage to Archbishop Romero and to the
thousands who, like him, died fighting for right-side-up justice in this
reign of injustice?

At times the narratives of History end badly, but she, History
itself, never ends. When she says goodbye, she only says: I’ll be back.

Translation from Spanish: Dr. Moti Nissani

Among his other achievements, in 1971, EDUARDO GALEANO wrote The Open Veins of Latin America and, in 1976, escaped death at the hands of CIA-financed Argentine death squads.

Trust is falling to all-time lows as to many government and private
institutions. Why? Because institutional corruption is so rampant that
it is becoming obvious to everyone from Joe Sixpack to amateur and sophisticated professional investors.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Whistleblower and nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen, Fairewinds
Associates, discusses problems with nuclear power that he says began in
1942 and persist today, including secrecy, cost, and waste at the Ending
the Nuclear Age Conference. This program was recorded by Chicago Access
Network Television (CAN TV).

WASHINGTON, Jan. 23, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ - A group of 20
ex-NASA scientists have concluded that the science used to support the
man-made climate change hypothesis is not settled and no convincing
physical evidence exists to support catastrophic climate change
forecasts.

Beginning in February 2012, the group of scientists calling themselves The Right Climate Stuff
(TRCS) team received presentations by scientists representing all sides
of the climate change debate and embarked on an in-depth review of a
number of climate studies.

Employing a disciplined approach of problem
identification and root cause analysis honed from decades of dealing
with life threatening safety issues in successfully sending astronauts
up through Earth's atmosphere and returning them safely home, the TRCS
team concluded that no imminent threat exists from man-made CO2.

TRCS team is comprised of renowned space scientists with formal
educational and decades career involvement in engineering, physics,
chemistry, astrophysics, geophysics, geology and meteorology. Many of
these scientists have Ph.Ds. All TRCS team members are unpaid volunteers
who began the project after becoming dismayed with NASA's increasing
advocacy for alarmist man-made climate change theories.

1. The science of what is causing global climate change or warming is clearly not settled and never has been.

2. There is no convincing physical evidence to support the man-made climate change hypothesis.
The standard test of a hypothesis is whether it is supported by real
observations, which seems to have been ignored by climate alarmists.

3. Claims made by proponents of catastrophic man-made
warming are dominantly supported by non-validated computer models and
the output of these models should not be relied upon by policy-makers. Some TRCS team members have been making critical decisions using complex computer models for decades.

4. There is no immediate threat of catastrophic global warming even
if some warming occurs. The sea level is not going to suddenly begin a
steep acceleration of its 18,000-year rate of rise. Global sea level
rise is not currently accelerating despite what climate change alarmists
claim.

5. The U.S. Government has overreacted to a possible catastrophic
warming. The probable negative impacts to the economy, jobs and an
increased cost of food, transportation and utilities will be severe and
hurt the poor and middle class the most. Real experiments show that
Earth's habitats and ecosystems could be damaged if CO2 levels are
actually reduced. Environmentalists have been grossly misled to believe
CO2 is a pollutant.

6. Empirical evidence shows that Earth is currently "greening" significantly due to additional CO2 and a modest warming.

7. Money saved by abandoning a premature rush to lower CO2 emissions
could be better spent by continuing research on alternative energies
that are not currently competitive or reliable.

Dr. Harold Doiron, team leader for TRCS and former NASA scientist, along
with H. Leighton Steward, will be participating on The Hard Question
panel debate on climate change tonight at 5:00pm at The National Press
Club, Holeman Lounge (13th floor) , 529 14th Street, Washington, DC.

More information can be found at www.CO2isGreen.org.

Supporting scientific information can be found at www.PlantsNeedCO2.org.

A talk by Rupert Sheldrake at the conference ELECTRIC UNIVERSE 2013: The Tipping Point, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Many scientists like to think that science already understands the ways
of the natural world. The fundamental questions are answered, leaving
only the details to be filled in. The impressive achievements of science
seemed to support this confident attitude. But recent research has
revealed unexpected problems at the heart of physics, cosmology,
biology, medicine and psychology.

Dr. Sheldrake is a biologist
and author of more than 80 scientific papers and 10 books, including
Science Set Free (September 2012).

Alert Level from the Radiation Network is approx. 100CPM (counts per minute)

Results in St. Louis today: 66.4 CPM and 60.0 CPM

The
counter on the left picked up a bit more than the counter on the right
hand side.. I suppose this is due to uneven distribution of radioactive
elements in the snow or on the ground beneath the snow.

---------------------------

I have assembled radiation links from around the world to use here, plus two good charts to show exposure level limits:

Premiering this week at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, the new documentary "Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield" follows investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill to Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen as he chases down the hidden truths behind America’s expanding covert wars. We’re joined by Scahill and the film’s director, Rick Rowley, an independent journalist with Big Noise Films. "We’re looking right now at a reality that President Obama has essentially extended the very policies that many of his supporters once opposed under President Bush," says Scahill, author of the bestseller "Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army" and a forthcoming book named after his film. "One of the things that humbles both of us is that when you arrive in a village in Afghanistan and knock on someone’s door, you’re the first American they’ve seen since the Americans that kicked that door in and killed half their family," Rowley says. "We promised them that we would do everything we could to make their stories be heard in the U.S. ... Finally we’re able to keep those promises." [includes rush transcript]

The promotion of ideas like dumping mineral dust
across the oceans continue to receive traction, but critics warn of
unintended consequences

If world leaders refuse to follow the sane advice of climate scientists
and innovators in sustainable energy and agriculture much longer, it
should be noted that there's a group of people out in the margins
willing to perform planetary experiments to halt the progress of climate
change by whatever strange, outlandish or dangerous means necessary.
Geoengineers.

As another new report in The Guardianshows
Tuesday, a new study shows that geoengineering advocates would consider
sprinkling billions of tons of "mineral dust" across the surface of the
world's oceans in order to offset the carbon pollution of today's
modern industrial society.

Ignoring the law of unintended consequences and despite that the
effort would "require a mining effort on the same scale as the world's
coal industry and would alter the biology
of the oceans," supporters of continued research into the idea say that
such plans should be retained in case other efforts to forestall
greenhouse gas emissions fail.

But, as author and activist Naomi Klein worried last year
after reports of a "rogue geoengineer" operating in British Columbia
surfaced, was that "serious scientists" backed by "deep pockets"
appeared ready and willing to "actively tamper with the complex and
unpredictable natural systems that sustain life on earth."

Klein wondered if the repeated appearance of scientific voices
calling for complext schemes such as these shouldn't urge the world's
citizens and policy makers to stop and have a conversation about their
deep implications. She wrote:

The appeal is easy to understand. Geoengineering offers the
tantalizing promise of a climate change fix that would allow us to
continue our resource-exhausting way of life, indefinitely. And then
there is the fear. Every week seems to bring more terrifying climate
news, from reports of ice sheets melting ahead of schedule to oceans
acidifying far faster than expected. At the same time, climate change
has fallen so far off the political agenda that it wasn’t mentioned once
during any of the three debates between the presidential candidates. Is
it any wonder that many are pinning their hopes on a
break-the-glass-in-case-of-emergency option that scientists have been
cooking up in their labs?

But [...] it is a good time to pause and ask, collectively, whether
we want to go down the geoengineering road. Because the truth is that
geoengineering is itself a rogue proposition. By definition,
technologies that tamper with ocean and atmospheric chemistry affect
everyone. Yet it is impossible to get anything like unanimous consent
for these interventions. Nor could any such consent possibly be informed
since we don’t — and can’t — know the full risks involved until these
planet-altering technologies are actually deployed.

As Common Dreamsreported last
year, the prowess of such efforts is often bolstered by some of the
ideas' financial backers, such as Microsoft founder and billionaire Bill
Gates.

And additionally, as technology expert and critic of geoengineering schemes Diana Bronson has pointed out,
"Some of geoengineering's most ardent advocates are best known for
their arguments against climate action, including outfits like the
American Enterprise Institute and individuals like Bjørn Lomborg of
Denmark."

"Somehow they're now urgently calling for a massive techno-fix for a
problem they have spent their careers saying is exaggerated."

Geoengineering – global-scale intervention to combat climate change – is a controversial idea
because of the risk of unintended consequences on a planet-wide scale.
But scientists argue it needs to be researched in case international
efforts to cut the emission of greenhouse gases from human activities
fail to prevent dramatic changes in climate and emergency measures are
needed.

Dissolving mineral dust in the ocean makes sea water more alkaline
and able to absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The mineral
olivine is attractive because it would dissolve within a year or two –
delivering near-instant carbon reductions – and is present below the
Earth's surface around the world. Köhler's research, published in Environmental Research Letters, found that sprinkling 3bn tonnes of olivine would remove almost 10% of man-made carbon emissions from the atmosphere.

More than 10% would be absorbed by the oceans, but the energy needed
to grind and ship the mineral dust would result in carbon emissions. Up
to one-third of that would be absorbed in the seas if coal-fired power
stations were the source of the electricity. The mineral needs to be
ground down to 1 micron size to prevent it sinking to the ocean floor
before it dissolves.

Monday, January 21, 2013

"The Sun is god!" cried JMW Turner as he died, and plenty of other
people have thought there was much in his analysis. The Aztecs agreed,
and so did the pharaohs of Egypt. We are an arrogant lot these days, and
we tend to underestimate the importance of our governor and creator. We
forget that we were once just a clod of cooled-down solar dust; we
forget that without the Sun there would have been no photosynthesis, no
hydrocarbons - and that it was the great celestial orb that effectively
called life into being on Earth. In so far as we are able to heat our
homes or turn on our computers or drive to work it is thanks to the
unlocking of energy from the Sun.

As a species, we human beings have become so blind with conceit and
self-love that we genuinely believe that the fate of the planet is in
our hands - when the reality is that everything, or almost everything,
depends on the behaviour and caprice of the gigantic thermonuclear
fireball around which we revolve.

I say all this because I am sitting here staring through the window at
the flowerpot and the bashed-up barbecue, and I am starting to think
this series of winters is not a coincidence. The snow on the flowerpot,
since I have been staring, has got about an inch thicker. The barbecue
is all but invisible. By my calculations, this is now the fifth year in a
row that we have had an unusual amount of snow; and by unusual I mean
snow of a kind that I don't remember from my childhood: snow that comes
one day, and then sticks around for a couple of days, followed by more.

I remember snow that used to come and settle for
just long enough for a single decent snowball fight before turning to
slush; I don't remember winters like this. Two days ago I was cycling
through Trafalgar Square and saw icicles on the traffic lights; and
though I am sure plenty of readers will say I am just unobservant, I
don't think I have seen that before. I am all for theories about climate
change, and would not for a moment dispute the wisdom or good
intentions of the vast majority of scientists.

But I am also an empiricist; and I observe that something appears to be
up with our winter weather, and to call it "warming" is obviously to
strain the language. I see from the BBC website that there are
scientists who say that "global warming" is indeed the cause of the cold
and snowy winters we seem to be having. A team of Americans and Chinese
experts have postulated that the melting of the Arctic ice means that
the whole North Atlantic is being chilled as the floes start to break
off - like a Martini refrigerated by ice cubes.

I do not have the expertise to comment on the Martini theory; I merely
observe that there are at least some other reputable scientists who say
that it is complete tosh, or at least that there is no evidence to
support it. We are expecting the snow and cold to go on for several
days, and though London transport has coped very well so far, with few
delays or cancellations, I can't help brooding on my own amateur
meteorological observations. I wish I knew more about what is going on,
and why. It is time to consult once again the learned astrophysicist,
Piers Corbyn.

Now Piers has a very good record of forecasting the weather. He has been
bang on about these cold winters. Like JMW Turner and the Aztecs he
thinks we should be paying more attention to the Sun. According to
Piers, global temperature depends not on concentrations of CO2 but on
the mood of our celestial orb. Sometime too bright the eye of heaven
shines, said Shakespeare, and often is his gold complexion dimmed. That
is more or less right. There are times in astronomical history when the
Sun has been churning out more stuff - protons and electrons and what
have you - than at other times. When the Sun has plenty of sunspots, he
bathes the Earth in abundant rays.

Ad

When the solar acne diminishes, it seems that the Earth gets colder. No
one contests that when the planet palpably cooled from 1645 to 1715 -
the Maunder minimum, which saw the freezing of the Thames - there was a
diminution of solar activity. The same point is made about the so-called
Dalton minimum, from 1790 to 1830. And it is the view of Piers Corbyn
that we are now seeing exactly the same phenomenon today.

Lower solar activity means - broadly speaking - that there is less
agitation of the warm currents of air from the tropical to the temperate
zones, so that a place like Britain can expect to be colder and damper
in summer, and colder and snowier in winter. "There is every indication
that we are at the beginning of a mini ice age," he says. "The general
decline in solar activity is lower than Nasa's lowest prediction of five
years ago. That could be very bad news for our climate. We are in for a
prolonged cold period. Indeed, we could have 30 years of general
cooling."

Now I am not for a second saying that I am convinced Piers is right; and
to all those scientists and environmentalists who will go wild with
indignation on the publication of this article, I say, relax. I
certainly support reducing CO2 by retrofitting homes and offices - not
least since that reduces fuel bills. I want cleaner vehicles.

I am speaking only as a layman who observes that there is plenty of snow
in our winters these days, and who wonders whether it might be time for
government to start taking seriously the possibility - however remote -
that Corbyn is right. If he is, that will have big implications for
agriculture, tourism, transport, aviation policy and the economy as a
whole. Of course it still seems a bit nuts to talk of the encroachment
of a mini ice age.

But it doesn't seem as nuts as it did five years ago. I look at the snowy waste outside, and I have an open mind.

Healthesound.info

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